I know they're two older posts and that they are only tangentially related to this suggestion, but I have a major problem with the following:
Night Strike wrote:agentcom wrote:Fastposted by NS:
NS, why are you opposed?
I'm opposed to automated tournaments because it's not CC's job to run tournaments for organizers.
I'm opposed to this suggestion for the reasons in the 3rd post of the thread: a lot of coding work to integrate such a feature that only a few people would try to use and even fewer people would be able to use correctly.
I would wholeheartedly disagree that it is not CC's job to run tournaments. CC has, over the past couple of years, specifically moved towards running tournaments itself (Any of the Conquer Cups, the recent Havoc Boards or Freedom Awaits tournaments, and the CC-sponsorship of the TPA tournaments). If CC has shown us anything over the past couple of years, it is that they wish to run official tournaments.
I do not think this move is a bad thing - it is actually great for the site. I think the TDs should be there to support TOs and provide better tournaments. This is a smart business play because most of your long term customers here are involved in either tournaments or clans.
That being said, I would agree that from my uneducated point of view regarding the coding, it seems like a lot of work for something that few organizers use. However, I would also state that I tend to prefer the long, more detailed tournaments over the quick single-elimination bracket-style ones we see more of lately. To this end, I think instituting a 1-year cap on tournaments was a step backwards.
blakebowling wrote:Night Strike wrote:agentcom wrote:Fastposted by NS:
NS, why are you opposed?
I'm opposed to automated tournaments because it's not CC's job to run tournaments for organizers.
I'm opposed to this suggestion for the reasons in the 3rd post of the thread: a lot of coding work to integrate such a feature that only a few people would try to use and even fewer people would be able to use correctly.
I will say we have no plans to automate all tournaments, nor do I have any desire to automate all tournaments.
I do believe that tournaments could benefit from a few automated features, mainly the upkeep of a signups list, however automating tournaments both removes the fun from tournaments and removes all room for creativity on the part of the organizer. I stand beside NS's opposition to a fully automated tournament system.
As far as this specific suggestion goes, I understand that it could be useful in certain circumstances. However, a large part of deciding which suggestions go and which ones don't is balancing developer time against community benefit. While this would have some benefit for a limited group of users (Tournament Organizers), this would require a substantial amount of time to develop, and I believe that time could be better used elsewhere within tournaments.
On that note, I Officially Reject this suggestion.
As per above, I think you are limiting your view of it as Night Strike is. The suggested feature would not only benefit the tournament world, but be immensely helpful in the Clan circles as well. In fact, a feature like this may have been able to prevent Qwert from resigning as director of CL5. Further, although the Callouts section is not as populated as it used to be, frequent players in that area could also benefit from such a suggestion. I suspect it could also be used to have helped avoid the fiasco of multiple game creation and inviting deadbeat players to the Havoc Boards and Freedom Awaits competitions.
I think there are flaws in what Robes has suggested, but I do not think they necessitate a flat-out rejection. I don't have the coding skills to be able to offer any assistance in implementing this, but I suggest that it is in CC's best interests to help support development of this. If Night Strike is worried about game creation errors, help work through the beta testing on it via a third party script before implementing it as hardcoding. Then you can help walk new TOs through their first use of it, instead of just throwing it at them and letting them screw up (as you seem to be suggesting will happen).
If medal awarding is truly at issue here... so be it. I know some players play for medals, others do not. I know some TOs organize for medals, others organize to play in a competition they would be fun. You can write in a rule based on the level of automation for what will allow a medal to be awarded - too much automation and no medal.